Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, broadcasts, and so on. Such networks, which are usually multiple access networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology supported by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). UMTS also supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides higher data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks.
As the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, research and development continue to advance wireless technologies not only to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband access, but to advance and enhance the user experience with mobile communications.
Generally, a wireless communication network can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each wireless terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to a communication link from a base station to a wireless terminal, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to a communication link from a wireless terminal to a base station.
Base stations communicate with mobile terminals over a downlink control channel to provide scheduling assignments and other control information to facilitate communicating with the base station. The base stations can transmit the control information according to a variety of formats, and the mobile terminals can be unaware of the format chosen by the base station. In this regard, mobile terminals can blindly decode transmissions sent over the control channel according to known formats. In some deployments, the structure of the control channel can be relatively complex. Consequently, blind decoding can sometimes render improper results, or false alarms (e.g., by selecting the wrong hypothesis for decoding the control channel), where the decoding appeared to be proper. Conventionally, false alarm detection is based on verifying a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) of a decoded packet. If data decoded using a decoding hypothesis passes CRC, the decoding hypothesis is assumed to be correct. However, there may be cases where a decoding hypothesis that passes CRC is still not reliable. For example, it is possible that a set of noise samples will pass CRC. Therefore, there is a desire to improve decoding in wireless communication networks.